I’m trying to work it into my thick skull: often in our community, to speak any word of disagreement, much less to bring a correction, is often interpreted as hate. Just as our culture thinks “all we need is love,” so also our culture thinks if you love someone you have to totally support everything that person is doing. What is the requirement for each member? Every member must put on love and I pray the Spirit causes the love of God to overflow through me to you. Pray for the Spirit to cause the love of God to overflow through you to me. I confess, you cannot love me well on your own. So, one of the most helpful things you can do before getting out of the car each Sunday is stop and pray, “Holy Spirit, help me love these people well today.” Our ability to love the people of God is the product of the Holy Spirit in us. So where does it come from? Where do we get this love? Romans 5:5, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Our experience of the redeeming love of God is the product of the Holy Spirit in us. This love is radical, sacrificial, and not of this world. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”Įach worship gathering is a family reunion where we renew our love for one another by actively serving and building one another up. Colossians 3:12-14 says, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. This is hypocrisy! When we live this way we don’t love the church, we only love our gifts. I love you because I get to serve you, lead you, or encourage you. I love you because I get to preach to you. We make a spectacle of the church when we love it because it provides a platform for our gifts. Hypocritical or ingenuine love is made evident in Judas who betrayed Jesus with a kiss in order to gain 30 pieces of silver. Romans 12:9 says, “Let love be genuine.” Let love be without hypocrisy. Every member must put on love (Col 3:14).We must use our gifts for the good of one another and with a whole lot of love. The biblical Spirit-and-truth driven idea of love says doing good to one another requires love. Now, there is a world of difference between saying, “love is absolutely necessary” and “all we need is love.” The popular pleasure driven idea of “all we need is love” says it doesn’t matter if we can pay the bills or buy groceries, we are just going to hold hands and stare into one another’s eyes. As you consider your gift and this church, remember this, I. The apostle Paul has been teaching about spiritual gifts. This is clear from his use of the words ‘one another’ (three times in verses 10 and 16), ‘brotherly love’ (10) and ‘God’s people’ (13). Soon Paul will write about love for our enemies (12:17–21), but first he portrays it pervading the Christian community (12:9–16). Romans 12–15 are a sustained exhortation to let love govern and shape all our relationships. But now Paul focuses on agapē as the essence of Christian discipleship. So far in Romans all references to agapē have been to the love of God-demonstrated on the cross (5:8), poured into our hearts (5:5) and doggedly refusing to let us go (8:35, 39). “Without doubt agapē-love now dominates the scene. With his usual clarity, John Stott summarizes these verses. The call to us today is to love one another with a genuine love that hates evil and holds fast to the good. Hate the evil within and cling to the good we see. Be affectionate toward one another with purity. Don’t be a hypocrite or a poser love the church like family. Writing in Romans 12:9, the Apostle Paul tells us to let love be genuine. There is a well established rule that we should be genuine. A K-mart cowboy was a person trying to look like a cowboy but couldn’t milk a cow, ride a horse, a haul hay. A poser was often someone who has trying to look like a skater but didn’t skate. If you were a little more country, you didn’t want to be a K-mart cowboy. Growing up, one of the things you didn’t want to be was a poser. Main Point: Genuine loves hates evil and holds fast to good.
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